I would quit gaming. Get a dog instead perhaps. Or I would find free games to play. Perhaps I would Free all games.

Also, if enough people jumped on it to make $1 bil in two weeks? Plus the whole "hey, let's charge for 1-year DLC subscriptions!" and all the silly additional third-party branded merchandise (controllers, sunglasses, keyboards, whatever)?

Clearly, there's a whole bunch of people out there who managed to arrange their entertainment budget in order to have the $$$. There's no mass revolt against prices anytime soon, at least not among a large enough group of people to matter. So, supply & demand is satisfied.



There are a good number of people who do make decisions like that. Brand loyalty? That's choosing to support a company (like, buying a certain brand of cereal/tuna/whatever, even when the other one is on sale this week). "Buy local" movements? Again, choosing to support companies that you prefer, for reasons beyond simple value. Choosing to buy a new copy instead of a used one that just profits Gamestop? So that the company you like will have the funding they need to keep making games you like? Ditto.

(Me, I do some things like that.... I try to buy most of my comics from my local shop, instead of a bit cheaper on Amazon. Ditto with my local tabletop game store.)

If the publishers don't care about the gamers besides how much money they can wring out of them, then why the hell should I care about them?

I do support the companies that I think deserve it, like CD Projekt, some indie developers, small companies that localize niche games. A publisher who rushes their games to follow some strict development cycle, or saves half of the content for DLC, I'll get their games on sale or used... if I even get them at all.

I wouldn't be willing to pay $70 for a digital copy of something. If it was physical I would definitely buy it.

Well actually I got it for half price on disc because the distributors had a price war, which wouldn't have happened if we were all supporting thier efforts to charge ￡50 for a game. And the developers make the same amount of money through Steam so they're not losing out. As i say, if it's cheaper for a physical version I'll buy it. But I'm not going to support efforts to charge double when I can wait until there's a Steam sale or an Amazon-Play price war.

Nice outlook




If you got Skyrim for half price on release well done, otherwise nothing new here.

Yeah, defintely.

My thoughts are:

I'll either pay the $70 or I'll wait for a price drop.

It doesn't surprise me, Original Xbox games used to be 50, when 360 came out they bumped up the price to 60. I do think that is horrible, before we know it they will be charging 100 dollars for new games. Also you may not have a choice to buy new or used, rumors have been floating around that both companies plan on making it impossible for their console to play used games. This is outrageous I know, the thing is without the used game market companies will have no reason to lower any games price ever. Looks like I may just stick with my PC & 360 next Gen...

It almost makes one want to go on "strike" against the Gaming corporations, but that is futile because the few people who stop buying these games or consoles does not hurt their profit margins at all. That is because they charge over 80% more than what it costs to actually make the game.

You can get used to it all you want, but some of us don't have a lot of disposable income, and an extra 10 per video game is enough to turn us off of gaming, and we certainly have a right to voice our opinion. If enough of us voice our opinion, and vote with our wallet, the game companies will get the point sooner rather then later. So, no "getting used to it" is not an acceptable option. If you have nothing useful to add to the conversation, just don't post.

I haven't bought a "New Release" since Oblivion.

Don't Get Fooled Again!

This is something I have found to be a rare case among many of my friends and what I hear about of their friends again. Kind of shame really.

I think there is some perception among many people out there that the retail space, $60/70 video games are the end all be all of the hardcoe industry. This is far from the case, and even less so now with the resurgence of thriving small scale development. More and more developers working at big companies are also getting fed up with the bloated AAA business and decide to leave for smaller projects. There's no reason to start boycotting games altogether just because the likes of EA and Activision start charging even more. I think the general outlook for the future of gaming, especially on PC, is pretty positive.

Wait..what? Half of the PC games on my shelf are used. Not every game requires online activation, and games that require CD-Keys will still install, and even play online, so long as the original owner isn't still trying to use it online at the same time. Oh, and I have a fairly large PC game collection.


Sadly, you are right. Hopefully though, if the rumours about no used games and increased price hike are true, that will spark many of the people that are on the fence about buying/not buying a game, will put them on the "not buy" side. I already practice a fairly restrictive game purchasing regimen(or, well, I have been, but there are a decent amount of games coming out this year that I've been waiting for quite a while, including Diablo 3. This year will see me purchasing the most amount of games in the last 5 years), only buying games AFTER they've been out for a while, or if it's from a developer I reaaaaaaallllly trust(which isn't many nowadays. Bethesda and Blizzard. That's it).

I doubt it. Companies know that that's a lot of money, and that many people won't be willing to pay it.

Additionally, keep in mind that prior generation games (PS2, Xbox) cost $60 early on. They did drop to $50 later while current gen games are still at $60, but that price has stuck around for awhile.

This isn't true at all, and the truth of the matter is, when game companies are trustworthy, and put out quality games, they reap in the profits. Look at that game company that recently went to Kickstarter and wanted 400k so they could make a 2D game that they knew their fans wanted. They raised 3.5 MILLION DOLLARS, because their fans knew they could trust them and that they wouldn't get screwed. On the other hand, why should we give a crap about idiots like EA who put out crap game after crap game, and half of those are just reskins of the previous game with a few new explosions.

Gamers care about the developers who care about them. Pretty simple concept. When the game companies stop caring about us, why should we give a damn about them? Stop acting like the big game companies aren't soul-svcking vermin who are only concerned with the bottom line, because that's all they are.

I'll just do what I do now - rarely pay original RRP and wait for a price drop. I probably average at buying two games at full price a year. There's not many games where I feel like I can't wait a few months (or longer) for a price drop. Sidenote: I just bought Bioshock 2 for ￡5.

Not sure where you are based, but in the US, I'm not aware of any retail shops that sell used PC software or games. Are you buying used PC games from people on ebay? Don't think I'd feel comfortable paying for something and then hoping that the original owner won't try to use it at the same time

Maryland, and gamestop still has about 40-50 PC games at any time in their store, some of their quite old(Pretty sure I saw a Dark Age of Camelot in there not to long ago). That, and yes I do buy from Ebay, but I"m a fairly experienced E-bayer and know what to look for in peoples listings, ie: How to read between the lines. And I always ask questions when I know a game requires an activation key or something. Like "Have you completely un-installed the game from your computer? Do you have the activation key? If the Key doesn't work, will you issue me a refund?"

Your first paragragh is you praising some game no ones herd of thats gonna be played by like 1000 people. Yes im talking about the big game companies because they make they the good games. If games cost 70 bucks fine thats usualy happens every time a new console comes out. We gamers get what we deserve from these big soul svcking vermin game companies because most of us are no better, most of you will buy what ever they throw at you, and then come here and complain about it. So theres enough people out there buying these reskin ea games you talk about to keep them floating, so they must be doing something right.

If Beth only made computer games and sold them on steam and no one bought them at release, they would likely go belly up.

Im not sure that the hell im agrueing with you about because I hate hearing these rumors about the next gen consoles. The industry as a whole players and companies are all to blame for what ever happens, for every one person who dont want there system pluged into the net so the companies can keep an eye on them there are 5 more people who could care less, so there.

The 87,000+ people who already own the game disagree with you.

Good games, or "the" good games? The way you said it sounds like you think they are the only ones who make good games. If that's the case, you are sadly mistaken.

You're right, most of them will buy whatever they throw at them, for whatever price. And that's the main problem here.

Like I stated earlier, I feel that's true. And it's also something that should stop.

Whenever morons go about buying crap without concern of what they are buying, it validates the crappy products that are spewn out over and over.

I've never once bought a game that I didn't research quite a bit beforehand, and I've only bought 3 games in the last decade at the actual release date: Skyrim, Oblivion, and Neverwinter Nights 2. So I'm out of that over-generalization of yours. And that particular game and company aren't exactly Indie developers, and over 80,000 people donated to that game, and at least twice that amount expressed interest in buying the game, which makes your "1,000 people will play it" a pretty idiotic statement to make. Also, Beth ONLY made computer games(no console releases) all the way up to Morrowind. Hell, Xbox didn't get a Morrowind release until shortly before Oblivion released! They did just fine, so another false statement right there.

I'm glad you admit you don't know why you're arguing, but I still don't see how you find the players at fault for game companies ever increasing greed. I see it as solely game developers(actually, publishers to be honest) at fault, as they put increasingly unrealistic demands on the developers to release games long before they're actually ready, which in turn causes the games to be bug-ridden crap releases. Then when the game sells poorly, they blame it all on piracy, and start jacking the prices on the iteration of that game, and put even more restrictions on how to play the game AND shorten deadlines on the developers even more so they can try to recoup the losses from the last game. The cycle continues to feed on itself, and is now resulting in these awful rumors about the next-gen consoles. I don't see players much at fault there at all, except for maybe the CoD [censored](of which, sadly, my best friend is one of) who continue to buy every successive game every freaking year. That's just about the only example of that I can particularly give. Maybe a few years ago I could have pointed towards Rock band/Guitar Hero, but those are now defunct brands, and not to mention even though they came out just as quickly, they were still actually pretty good games, with even a little bit of innovation in every generation.

Yeah. I find it hard to see it any other way. Likewise, the companies out there that don't care solely about their bottom line are likely to find me a more willing customer who may even show them some loyalty, but those who just try to gouge every last penny out of me... no.

If the prices of new games increase by 10 euros I won't buy them anymore, that's just too much for me. Video gaming is a nice form of entertainment but there are many, less expensive alternatives. Drawing and reading are free